Mesmeric Moves: How to Thrive When the Media Shifts | Michael Holstein

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. A special shout out to our one listener in Barcelona, Spain. We are not translating this into Spanish for your benefit, so hopefully you can understand it. Joining me today, Michael Holstein of Mem— Meric Media. Did I get that right?

No, you were close. Mesmeric. Mesmeric Media, like mesmerizing but different.

Okay, my apologies. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Well, let's start there. What, what is the origin story of Mesmeric?

Um, so I ran a company, um, for, I don't know, 15, 12, 15 years called The Content Farm, uh, based out of Washington, DC, producing television Television, movies, all that stuff. And a couple things happened. About 2 years ago, I was trying to scale up, even at a time when the industry was scaling down. So I met a couple guys who had a production company out of Philadelphia. They did a lot of commercials, branded content, things like that. But they had what I didn't, which was kind of hard skill infrastructure. So editors, graphic designers, camera ops, and I had developers, investors, lawyers, all the things, you know, that I did. So it's just really, you know, I don't know, just a good fit all around. We had the same kind of ethos, same work ethic, like the same stuff and liked each other's work and most of all kind of liked each other as people. So we partnered up for lack of a better way to describe it. And, um, I wanted to rebrand to reflect the new entity. And at the same time, um, you know, when I started my company, I thought content and Content Farm was good name. And now in this world of anybody with like an iPhone is a content creator, um, hell, I'm a content creator. I mean, it's not necessarily bad, but also like everybody on the street claims to be content creator, right? Uh, so when I made it, it wasn't necessarily that easy of an entry point, but it kind of just felt dated, you know, even the idea of the farm, like we're just churning out content. So went looking for a new name and just through sort of, I don't know, process of elimination, trial and error, available domains, whatever it was, found our way to Benzmeric, which, yeah, it's a cool name. Hard to pronounce, obviously, but But yeah, so far, so far, so good with it. We like it.

I love it. So when, when you guys joined forces, did you, uh, create a new legal entity, or is this more like an adventure?

No, this is a fully— yeah, fully formed entity. So it's not just the branding and the ID, but a new LLC. And, um, I still have Content Farm that runs a couple projects and They still have J2 that does some of their commercial work, but for all of our sort of traditional TV movie work, um, everything's under the Mesmeric heading now.

Okay, so going back a couple of years ago when you were— you said you were trying to scale up when everybody else was scaling down. What were some of the challenges you ran into there?

It's just been a really weird couple of years, uh, and in the content industry. So I mean, you start with the proliferation of content, the short attention spans, and then factor in the mergers and acquisitions in the industry. So, you know, you're talking to the head of a network one day and they may not be there the next. They may not know who owns them or budgets are frozen, things like that. And then of course, obviously there was COVID, there was the actors and writers strikes, even the fires in LA, you know, a couple months ago, um, were sort of detrimental to our industry. So, um, but I've always sort of been of the mindset that in times of trouble or times of, I don't know, turmoil, there's also opportunity. Um, 100%. So it's a chance to sort of buy cheap. And, and, you know, so I guess by scaling up, it was just, uh, increasing our capacity to do more things. I mean, You know, it used to be, I don't know, for every 20 ideas we had, 5 would go into development and 1 would get picked up for a show. And those numbers just kind of got so stretched out. So it was like out of 100 ideas, 10 maybe get deeper development and 1 gets picked up for a show. So we just needed to be able to develop more, quicker, better, faster, cheaper, all the things, um, to fill this hole in the market. So even as networks are getting cheaper and cheaper, there's more and more need for hours of television. Um, you know, you got to put stuff on air with whether it's via fast channel, streaming, cable, whatever, um, the format. There's just a lot of empty space to fill. So, um, yeah, we started, uh, scaling up with an idea of, you know, the more ideas the better, and kind of having a big tent policy and just seeing what sticks.

Do you feel like the market has reached any type of saturation or, or had a fundamental shift?

Uh, definitely a fundamental shift. Um, saturation, I don't know. I don't think so. Um, in fact, recently, just in the past couple months, there's been, uh, increasingly positive signs of life that networks are open for business again and buying shows and things like that. But yeah, the fundamental shift is absolutely— I mean, even now that people are full, for a while there was just no buying. Now there is buying, at least in theory, but budgets are shrinking. Nobody really knows how to track things the same way. So, you know, it used to be shows on television and here's the Nielsen rating and, you know, whatever. But now between streaming and people consuming stuff on social and, you know, even going way back to DVRs, I mean, it's just been years and years and years of sort of chipping away at the fundamental way to benchmark successful content. Um, so, so with that shift, I think, comes uncertainty on the part of the buyers, the networks, which translates to, you know, more— less tolerance for risk, I would say, you know, only really putting into play the very bankable projects. So whether that's super unique content or A-list talent or, you know, access into unique worlds, um, they're just less prone to like take a step. Like if somebody now were to go to Discovery and pitch Naked and Afraid, they'd shoot it down in a heartbeat, but it's existed for 20 years, so So we kind of found there to be a hole in a marketplace because of, I don't know, overcautiousness. And I'd say, I mean, the other fundamental shift, which again seems to be rectifying itself, and I don't mean this politically at all, but for a few years we hit this point where we'd pitch a show to History Network or whatever, History Channel, which their audiences 98% white males, and they'd say literally, you know, hey, we can't buy any shows that feature white males anymore, which is, you know, just absurd on its face, is to sort of— obviously, I mean, we are a very diverse company. We have a lot of projects now. In fact, some of our biggest ones are with, you know, Black and non-white creators. But, you know, the idea that they were going to sort of create this box-checking system, a lot of the networks, you know. So we took a show about special forces or whatever to the History Channel, which is— couldn't be more in their damn wheelhouse. And they can't— well, there's not enough Black and brown people in this. Like, okay, but in the 1960s or '40s or 1800s in special forces, that, you know, that was the reflection of reality. Like, we—

you are elevating History Channel, right?

Right, exactly right. We love We love promoting underrepresented voices and we're fully in favor of, but also it's like, I don't want it to be performative. You know, I mean, the analogy I always use, some big football fan was the NFL has always had this Rooney rule where before a team can hire a coach, they have to interview a Black person. So for years it was Art Shell from the Raiders. And everyone, including Art, I'm sure, knew he wasn't getting the job. You know, they could have been had an assistant coach, offensive coordinator, who for years has been sort of groomed to take over when the head coach leaves. And they still have to go through this sort of performative process where we interviewed a Black person.

He should have charged for those interviews, right?

I mean, hopefully he got first-class airfare at least, nice hotel. But yeah, so we don't want to be performative about it. We love working with diverse creators, but we don't want to do it just to check a box. So I think that has been a big shift in the industry.

That's interesting that you said that, that, uh, the, the, the risk tolerance has gone down because I think that's a reflection of the uncertainty that you were referencing where I don't know exactly how I'm going to make money on this or how much money I'm going to make on it. And, and so I was talking to a producer here in Oklahoma City that had a— it was essentially a bank robbery plot that was based in the Civil War. Hmm. And, you know, like they came upon a cache of Confederate gold or something. I don't know. Anyway, he went to go pitch the deal in Hollywood and they loved the story. And they said, uh, but we want to, uh, put Channing Tatum as the lead. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what this is. Because he wrote it as well. And, and, and I, I realized through that conversation is like, most of the investors, uh, and, and people that are buying this stuff in general are pretty risk-averse. Like, they, they just, they, they want a known quantity. Would you say that's true?

It's crazy how true it is. And it's not even just that they want it. Of course, they should want a known quantity. Although I would also argue the economics are better to develop somebody versus to acquire somebody. So you could hire Shane Tatum or you can take that money, you know, the $20 million he's going to command or whatever, stick that into marketing and create yourself a new one. I mean, the smartest thing Food Network I think ever did was have, what was it, the Next Food Network Star thing, which was like a talent incubator. And they got, you know, it's now essentially the Guy Fieri Network, and he came out of that sort of process. So one of the things we do try to do is, you know, find, create talent, not just use existing talent. But yes, to your point, networks, will come back to us, we'll pitch them something and say, oh yeah, this is great, uh, you know, can we have Denzel Washington narrate it? And by the way, the budget's $25,000 an hour or something, you know. So like, like, you can't have everything, right? You can't have a name, quantity, high production value, low budgets, and all of the things. So, but yes, networks are more and more just seemingly drawn to safety, whether that's—

and, and it seems like a lot of the content And this kind of tracks with what you're saying is that it's, good Lord, formulaic, like lacks creativity. It's kind of like, I've seen this before. It was just different time period, different actors, different storyline, but it's the same damn show.

Yeah. And sometimes literally we've been on, I forgot what network it was. We were on a call a few weeks or so ago with a network and they said literally we could bring out the best new show, right? Whatever it is, cast, writer, everything. Or we could rerun— I forgot what the show was— NCIS or Law Order, one of those things. We could rerun that for the same and get the same rating, the same viewership. Why are we going to spend $50 million to launch something when we can just run something from our catalog? So like which is fine and I understand that, but like at some point you burn through that and you have to develop new audiences and you have to develop your new tentpoles and take risks on things like that. So it's, it's a stopgap measure. It's fine, I guess, to retreat to safety. But, you know, for the long-term view, it seems like to me, not good business.

No. And that's the nature of any industry when they find profit, they hold on to it and become more risk-averse. I think the best example for our purposes was, was like Kodak. And, you know, for years they'd been making so much money off of film that they completely missed the boat on digital. Right. And not, not that they didn't know it was coming, but that their answer to it was this, uh, camera that printed— it was a digital camera, but it printed kind of like a Polaroid. Like, and it's kind of like, no, no, no, no, no, you guys, you're missing it. But they were afraid to, you know, to lose the profit that had sustained them for decades.

Yep, yep. And I think I get it, you know. I mean, it's an expensive business. There's the competition is fierce and among networks for eyeballs, I mean, more so than ever. So, so yeah, I think you can go one of two ways with that. You either retreat to safety and, I don't know, tread water with your safe products, or you take a big swing at, you know, trying something different or, you know, creating new tent poles or, you know, and there's just a lack of, a lack of tolerance for that right now in the industry. And that was Part of, again, part of our ethos when we formed Mesmeric was, you know, we're not just gonna— I don't know if it's like, what is it, the 80/20 rule, right? Or 80% safe stuff, 20% take a swing. We're not, you know, bound by that, but at least some percentage of our time and efforts and revenue is going to be spent on new ideas and new things versus like just what feels safe in our wheelhouse. So And so far, honestly, I mean, the things we've— when we have stepped out of the comfort zone, I think are the ones we're getting the most results on recently. So I think there's probably among audiences and consumers just, you know, who don't care about the business part of it, like, hey, give me something new and interesting to watch.

Yeah. Well, you, you ticked my ears with 80/20. You know, that Pareto principle is one I discuss in my book, Profit First for Creatives. And for those of the listeners that don't know about the Pareto principle, he was a 19th-century Italian economist who did a study on land ownership in Italy, and he discovered that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land. But over the last century and a half, people have expanded that to include pretty much any endeavor that includes human behavior. And that, that axiom is that 20% of what you do— 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results. Right. And in my mind, what that means is finding out what the 20% that you do really well and do more of it and less of the 80%. Because some of the 80%, there's kind of an inverse rule to that, that there's some small percentage of your efforts that are actually counterproductive, that actually work against you. Of course, you want to eliminate those, but Figuring it out is the hardest spot. And you mentioned filling a hole in the market. So if you were going to define that in layman's terms that didn't understand the industry ins and outs, what would you say that hole is that you're filling?

So I think it's a willingness to take chances on non-traditional content. So, you know, people tune into Discovery Channel to see guys working hard jobs, or, you know, the Food Network to see— well, it used to be cooking, now it's like food-based game shows or whatever. Um, so for us, it's, you know, it's okay, here's a hybrid project that's a dating show and a cooking show, or here is, you know, we have a show that we're taking out to market now about the last racetrack in Alaska. And it's putting unexpected things in front of people. And still, TV used to have and still sometimes does, although increasingly I think it's maybe HBO and occasionally Apple kind of having these big scripted shows that capture the zeitgeist. But unscripted TV had these breakthrough moments. When Survivor was born. Well, I mean, for better or worse, look at what The Apprentice did. Um, right. So, uh, so we're trying to sort of get back to that era of, you know, exploration and trying new things. And, you know, again, with that 80/20, I don't know how it shakes up for us, um, but at least some portion of it and of our development time is chasing things that aren't It's just, you know, whatever the network mandates are. So if everybody's saying, oh, now we want shows about, I don't know, house flipping or paranormal or true crime, like things that are in aren't going to be in forever. Um, and it shifts on a dime, you know, it's like we want nothing but paranormal shows and then one day somebody or the powers that be, whoever they are, decide they've had enough paranormal shows, everybody wants You know, right now everybody wants sports, which is like, but they don't want to pay for league fees, right? So everybody, right? I mean, networks that you would never think on sports will have conversations like, well, we want sports, but not sports. Like we want, we're not going to pay, you know, NFL, MLB, the rights to broadcast the game, but we want a cooking show, a travel show, whatever that explores sports and things like that. Because, you know, sports and to a lesser extent, I guess, news are really the only things keeping live commercial TV afoot, afloat, right? Um, you know, things that you need to watch in real time. Um, so now everybody wants to be sports adjacent. Um, so, you know, people who spent the past 2 years doing nothing but true crime because that was the hot genre, you know, now find themselves having to shift. So we're trying to not be beholden to what, you know, the mandates are and what's in the zeitgeist at that given moment, and just be cognizant of the fact that it's always changing.

Okay, I'm going to pivot here for a minute. Um, what's it like— how has it changed your business having partners? Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

Uh, yeah, mostly for the better.

Um, we're not going to let them listen to this episode.

I know, I was going to say, like, if we— are we going to publicize this or not? Um, I have great partners. I love our team. I wouldn't partner up with people if I didn't. I mean, I think for me, doing good work's important, but enjoying who you do it with and trusting them is maybe even more important from a business sense and a personal well-being sense. So I've always sort of had partners and I think people make sort of the mistake, I'm sure you encounter this in talking to people when somebody's an entrepreneur and they're, oh, must be great to not have a boss. No, everyone's your boss when you're an entrepreneur. So, um, and it's sort of the similar— I think it's kind of analogous to partners. I mean, you can be a one-man band in terms of running the company, but you still have contractors, you still have camera people. So, you know, having partners, I think, just sort of defrays that burden, defrays the risk, brings in new ideas. Um, and it's nice to have somebody to kind of be in the trenches with you for battle and know you have a good team with you. So yeah, I've enjoyed it. I think maybe when I was, I don't know, 30 years old or something starting out, the idea of sharing creative control or not being the decider would have driven me crazy. And yeah, I think I probably still ultimately end up making sort of most of the decisions in our company, but just by virtue of the fact that I've been doing it longer, just old. But so, so yeah, I haven't found really any negative to having partners in this construct at least.

Yeah, I think it sounds well, I guess first comment I'd say is, is that, yeah, it doesn't matter whether you're an entrepreneur by yourself or a partner in a partnership, or, you know, you have 100 employees and you're the only owner, you still have to play nice with everybody. You know, I mean, you can't, you can't just be the tyrant that says, this is what we're going to do. I mean, you can, but it definitely, uh, limits your abilities. Um, I, I think the people that can get away with that, like that are the true, you know, maybe a Steve Jobs, right, that have that creative genius that can be the taskmaster. Those are very, very few and far between. So my follow-up question to that is, how do you guys segregate work among partners? So you're all owners, So, do you have different roles?

Yeah. I mean, I think maybe more unofficially than in, you know, the articles of incorporation, but— and it's kind of how we actually formed. So, I worked for years with a buddy of mine named Chris, who is a great field producer. We're doing a show, and he's the best at being out in the field, getting the guys there on time, getting the scenes we need, making sure we've got coverage of everything. Herding cats. Yes, he is an outstanding cat herder. I am a horrific cat herder. Big ideas and deal making and whatever, and interacting with media and talent management. So I have my strengths and I know where my weaknesses are. With our new partners, our Philadelphia team, kind of similarly, one is really great with finance, so he's awesome with budgets and operations, keeping, keeping the trains running on time. And the other, um, is super creative, so he oversees the graphic designers and the editors and color, even down to color correction. Um, so it's really been nice that everyone's kind of been able to step into the role they're most comfortable in but have some overlap with others. So, you know, so you have some support if you're out sick and something needs to be done or want to go on vacation and things like that. So yeah, I don't know if we just got lucky in kind of finding roles that are complementary without being contradictory to each other. But it was also intentional in finding the right partners was to find somebody who's got the exact same skill set as you. So yeah, so far so good. I mean, we'll butt heads. Not in an antagonistic way, but we'll have disagreements about do we pursue this project or this one or how much resource do we allocate here or whatever. And at some point, if we're really just at loggerheads and nobody will agree, somebody has to make a decision. And in our company, I do that. But it's very, very rare that that's the case. We agree on much more than we disagree on. And when we do disagree, a lot of times something better comes out of it.

So yeah, one of the things that I've noticed with partnerships in the past, and I actually fell into this trap myself in my experience, where, you know, you, you see somebody else that, that has a skill set that you don't, and it's, it's like, oh, that would be an ideal partner. But, but my, my question that I put back to everybody considering bringing on partners partners, because I don't think most people understand the gravity of a partnership. It's, as my lawyer says, it's like a marriage without sex. And he's very correct in that it's that level of commitment of in each other's business. And you have a lot of potential relationship conflicts, whether that's personalities or values or whatever. But the question I pose to people considering partners is, okay, is that something you could hire rather than bring on a partner? Is that a person you could hire? It doesn't sound like— maybe I'm hearing something that you didn't say, but like you were trying to scale up and then you decided to form a partnership. Is that kind of the thought process that you went through?

Yeah, yes and no. I mean, I didn't want to scale up because when I was doing it, it was, you know, still kind of coming out of the turbulent times. So we've always relied on contractors when there is big costs involved, right? So instead of buying edit bays and cameras, it's been more economical to buy time with the contractor, right? So in the partnership, I think, yeah, it was just a case of everyone bringing different skills to the table, um, equity for sure, you know, all putting in some cash to help on the scaling up part of it. But I didn't necessarily know what I wanted when I decided it was time to scale up. I still don't know, um, but I just know that there has to be Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm totally comfortable with admitting how little I know. But just a reflection of where the market is, like I said, you just have to have so many irons in the fire now. Definitely hit. And I don't think you can be niche anymore. So rather than take on more employees or take on more contractors, I want— and the other thing is I don't want to be doing this forever. I want to be on a beach in 5 years. You know, I need partners to do that, not employees.

So what do you mean, uh, not being niche anymore? What, what do you mean by that statement?

Uh, I think, you know, you'd have production companies, and some still can make it, who just do a certain genre. So, okay, actually, so, you know, one of our members of our board of directors, um, used to be the chief operating officer for Original Productions. They did Bering Sea Gold, Storage Wars, Deadliest Catch, but everything they did was male skewing Discovery Channel shows, right? And their— his old company, you know, was acquired by a bigger company, but they're having trouble now because, you know, there's not these just defined lanes anymore. Um, so instead of narrowcasting, we really wanted to be able to broadcast, um, and, you know, have a big tent. And I think the only way for us to do that was to not be niche. So while Like, I've done a lot of music for television. Um, my partners in Philly have done a lot of sports. We're all sports fans. Like, we want to do— we'd love to do sports and music and nothing else, but we also want to pay our mortgage. Um, so, um, so we have dating shows that we're doing and, you know, uh, travel shows and cooking shows and things that weren't normally in our wheelhouse professionally or in our interest level personally, but they're paying the bills. So, I guess again, a little bit back to the 80/20 thing, but if I can make a living of just doing music for TV or just doing sports stuff, I would. But just because sports is hot right now, I don't want to put all our eggs in that basket. So, TV is close to dead.

You're going to develop the Well, I, I think the Pickleball Network is probably with the Tennis Network or something like that.

I'm sure it's out there somewhere. I mean, I've watched, I've watched cornhole on TV, you know, because they'll show anything. There's a lot of hours to fill and a lot of channels to fill it. So, um, we're just trying to create some interesting stuff that resonates with people.

Yeah, well, I'm thinking of an idea pitching, uh, like a, a generation challenge between— on pickleball. Because, you know, those old ladies with knee braces.

Yeah. Don't look at—

they get out of the wheelchair to go play pickleball.

Right.

Yeah. You don't want to play them.

No. They'll kill you. Yeah. They know the angles and how to move and all that stuff. So.

Absolutely. So maybe a generational— maybe you could get some, like, superstar athletes that don't play pickleball. To be humiliated.

That would be good. Yeah. Well, yes. There was that show, Pros Versus Joes or whatever. And we actually have, because it's hot now, we do have a ton of sports shows in development. And one is not exactly what you talked about there, but close to that and putting people out of their comfort zones, athletes and others, and seeing how they do. So—

You can slam a basketball. Let's see if you can put some spin on it. Right.

A pickleball.

Yep.

Yep. And you get some people who are just freak athletes, right? They can do it all. But you get others who, you know, their best skill on the basketball court is that they're 7 feet tall, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the pickleball court.

So— Okay. So, one, I just lost my question. Standby. Ah, now I remember. A lot of our audience probably don't understand the economics, like how the deal flow works on a production, like where you're, uh, you, you're talking about pitching things and like, so let, what, what would you say an average budget for one of your productions is?

Oh boy.

I mean, are we talking $10 million, $1 million?

No. Well, so we do almost all TV, not movies. And it depends on the network. But I would just in broad strokes, you know, a season, a first season of a show will be between 6 and 10 episodes generally.

Right.

And networks cap out for unscripted TV at about $300,000 an episode, $300,000 an hour. So if we sell 6x60 show, so 6 hours of TV, the best you'll get is maybe $1.5 to $2 million to make it, which we're really good at making money stretch. And that's part of the thing of taking our team in-house, being in Philadelphia and DC versus Los Angeles. We have some sort of economic benefits and economies of scale. But, um, but it's crazy now too, just the range of budgets. I mean, we'll get on calls, our agent will set a call with a new streaming platform or network, and you know they have deep pockets. But, and you know, they'll say, all right, you know, our, well, our budget's $35,000 an hour. Like, all right, we're good, you know, we can produce cheaply, but we ain't that good.

Yeah.

Um, so Yeah, normal TV show is, I don't know, I think if you can ever get it to stay in the hundreds per hour, you're in really good shape with a network. But they cap out right around 300 for unscripted now. And even that's few and far between. So I'd say, you know, 250 is probably an average unscripted hour for premium cable.

Okay. So, so you, you come up with an idea, you develop the pitch. You go to a platform, a network, and pitch it, then they're going to pay you for, you know, X dollars, you know, like in your example, let's say $2 million for the season. Is there any backend on that, or is it just you?

Yeah, so upfront, no, I mean, so now there's increasingly more and more ways that deals are getting done. So there's model you just talked about, which is sort of the traditional model. There's the corporate sponsorship model, which is rapidly growing. And I have a lot of experience in that because I came out of PBS, which essentially has been doing that forever, just not calling it that. But it's, you know, 4 or 5 companies kind of put up money and product integration and things like that, integrated marketing, not just product placement, not just like Oh, you know, I'm drinking a Budweiser. Right. But, you know, really brand activation all around it and that funds it. And then there's sort of, well, then there's, you can fund with private equity and venture capital. And then there's sort of now increasingly like a hybrid model where some networks like Discovery, for example, where they have a lot of infrastructure and they need utilization across their edit bays and their, you know, camera operators and all that stuff. Rather than just saying like, all right, you know, your budget's $250 an hour for 8 episodes. Here's whatever, $2 million, bring us back 8 episodes. They'll say, okay, well, we're gonna handle this part of production services. You're gonna handle that part and we'll pay you a producer's fee of, you know, X amount. And, you know, and that's how it works. There is technically backend, but, you know, it's probably no secret that Hollywood accounting has never been kind to people who get paid in backend only. So, if your deal is a gross point deal, great, $1 transparent, I get 1 cent of every dollar that comes in here, cool, I'll take that. If it's 10% of net, it can be 90% of net, I don't want it because they're going to find a way to make that net be zero at least for the first couple of years. I think it's, I don't know, there's no magic number, but it seems to be when you hit your third year. Of a show, you— the, the bargaining power kind of shifts to the producer versus the network, and then you could get actually valuable backends. One of the things we try to do, and, and we're going to try increasingly to do, is raise our own money, um, so that we can greenlight things on our own and own them, um, because that's the only way you make money. I mean, if you're just relying on residuals, license fees, EP fees, whatever, you'll do fine, but you're not going to have crazy money. You own a concept and you're selling it around the world and you get a piece of the merchandise and the spinoffs and the podcasts and the books and all the things that can come with it is a game changer. So at some point later this year, we're going to go out seeking enough financing to have a pool of greenlight money, we can start projects on our own. But yeah, we, we get back-end points on all the deals. But, you know, I could— I'll look at my bank account sometime, I'll be like, oh cool, a check for 36 cents from Amazon came in, or whatever. So, um, you are going to get a reflection.

They did the accounting right.

Yeah, I'm sure they're not going to tell you one way or the other.

You could report transparently. I mean, I, I know from my stupid book that I sell, and it sells in other countries, and looking at the, you know, you can't find, and I'm an accountant, right? Like, you can't reconcile, well, what was the conversion rate on that day? Like, you know, I'm just kind of trusting that they're doing it right, but.

It's even harder with streaming because it's like, you know, do they count how many people tuned in or how long each person watched for or some combination of it. So, you get these sometimes reports, sometimes you don't even really get those. And I mean, it might as well just be random numbers on a page. So, I mean—

Why do you need random numbers?

Yeah. I mean, I went to law school, so I can read the contract and I know what I'm getting, but I can't read the ledger sheet. And even if I could, I probably wouldn't like it or be able to make sense of it. So, yeah, we like to get paid upfront and we like to own our own content. And I mean, that's probably one piece of advice I would give anybody is, you know, don't give, don't give away the IP, the underlying IP, because that's, that's your bread and butter someday.

I love it. Michael, how do people find out more about you? And if they have interest in learning more about what you do?

Yeah, our website is mesmeric.media. Email me.

Spell that for us.

Let me do my best. M-E-S-M-E-R-I-C.media. M-E-D-I-A. You can email me, michael@mesmeric.media. And yeah, our website I think has a lot of our in-development shows and our processes. People can pitch stuff through us through there, and I'm happy to speak to anybody who reaches out also. We are firmly of the belief that we're not going to pursue every idea, but there are no bad ideas. So, we're here for all of it. I'm happy to talk to people and mentor people. And we're always looking for new ways to partner up and collaborate.

So, yeah. You haven't heard my ideas yet, Michael.

Oh, bring them on. I guarantee you'll be better than a lot of the ones we've heard. But we like them all.

We'll have those links in the show notes. Thank you, Michael, for your time and your insight. I appreciate it. Listeners, if you like what you hear, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message and we'll replace Michael. Until then, ta-ta for now.

Thank you.